Trying to escape Mint XFCE for EndeavourOS on a potato. Normal boot instantly cuts the laptop's power. Using acpi=off stops the crash but kills the display, leaving me stuck at a dead blinking cursor.

General system Newbie
1

Hi guys. So, I have a potato PC

  • CPU: Intel Core i3 M 380

  • RAM: 4GB DDR3

  • GPU: Intel Integrated HD Graphics

  • Storage: 120GB SSD

So yeah, u guys can see my condition, I was using Linux Mint for almost 8 months now… for better performance I shifted from Win10 (REALLY HAPPY ABOUT THIS, EVEN IF I BUY NEW PC, THE FIRST THING TODO, I WILL GET LINUX INSTALLED)
Few people on internet suggested me to install Arch Linux, coz it grants more performance and speed… So I did some research and the Arch I should get is EndeavourOS (Subject to change with more and better recommendations)

The Problem:

When I try to boot the live ISO normally, the machine goes through a short sequence of text/code rainfall and then instantly cuts the power and shuts down completely to protect itself.

The only way I can stop the hard crash/shutdown is by editing the boot line in GRUB and adding acpi=off.

But here’s the catch: with acpi=off, the machine doesn’t crash, but it boots straight into a black screen with a single blinking text cursor (_). The graphical target/Xorg completely fails to load because the i915 Intel driver needs the ACPI subsystem to initialize the display and route the video signal. If I turn ACPI completely off, I essentially blindfold my graphics card.

While stuck at the blinking cursor, I managed to drop into a TTY terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F2), log in as liveuser, and manually run startx. It just throws a fatal error: “giving up unable to connect to the xserver”.

What I’ve Already Attempted:

I’ve tried a ton of different boot parameters at the end of the linux line, but nothing bridges the gap:

  1. nomodeset acpi=off : Blinking cursor (graphics fail).

  2. nomodeset alone : Instant power-off crash.

  3. i915.modeset=0 : Blinking cursor.

  4. intel_idle.max_cstate=1 acpi_osi=Linux : Instant power-off crash.

  5. video=VGA-1:d video=DP-1:d video=HDMI-A-1:d (checking for a phantom monitor bug) : Blinking cursor.

  6. noapic nolapic : Blinking cursor.

My Questions for the Sub:

  1. idk what to do, I have been asking solutions from Gemini and Claude, but they keep failing too… Scared that these AI may really brick it…So U guys got any fix?

  2. Is EndeavourOS perfect or should I go with MX linux or should I stay on Mint?

  3. Mint is perfect but it goes OOM sometimes doing some lil heavy tasking (Not choice, but have to do)

2

Have you tried MX linux? That’s an option. I can only say the hardware is outdated and low power but i think you already know that. (Potato PC)

3
  • try older ISO files from archive, like years before
  • try Zorin OS with X11 (X11 is installed along the hardware-heavier standrd, but needs to be selected in the log-in screen)
  • try what others recommend, MX Linux or so.
4

@rajdas Welcome to the community :slight_smile:

Is this a laptop with legacy BIOS or UEFI?

In BIOS check if things like fast startup, secure boot, hibernation etc are disabled, also make sure it is set to AHCI not something else.

There are some options for older laptops, not in any order:

  • Bodhi Linux
  • Lubuntu
  • Xubuntu
  • EOS, choose to do an online install and select the Xfce desktop

I think Mint has an Xfce version? Might be also something to look at.

I have an old HP Pavilion G6 laptop with 4GB of RAM, upgraded later to 8GB, integrated Intel graphics and I think also a i3 processor and have happily run EOS on it for more than 2.5 years without issue.

5

since archinstall is text based would it make a difference installing on a potato PC?

6

If you want an Arch-based system, straight Arch either uses a TUI installer (text, not graphical) and you can load lightweight DEs like XFCE, or I think the i3 Tiling window manager is also available straight from Archinstall, which would be even lighter.

Another option is Artix Linux, which you’ll have to build from the terminal (have your phone or another computer handy to ask Ai and/or the man pages while installing). Artix is very light, using XLibre instead of Wayland, and again, you can install whatever DE you want from xfce to a number of tiling window managers for a system that only needs 250–700 MB of RAM at idle, leaving more of your 4GB available, and feeling a bit snappier on the i3.

Another option is Void Linux which is even lighter, but you don’t get the Arch repositories.

IF the problem is just the age of the hardware, a newer rolling relase may not be your best bet. AntiX is a good choice. It’s lightweight, doesn’t use systemd, uses X11 in preference to Wayland, and you can put your choice of DE/WM on it. It comes with older kernels and drivers optimized for older hardware like the i3. It’s based on Debian (just like Mint, which you said works), but is MUCH lighter weight (With Xfce, expect ~150–300 MB RAM usage at idle, With a lightweight window manager (e.g., IceWM, Fluxbox, JWM) expect ~50–120 MB RAM usage at idle).

Keep in mind all of these will require much more work to install and get everything running that you may want than Mint was or EndeavourOS is.